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“That’s not true. He didn’t want you to have to do the things he did. When your abilities became clear, he didn’t want to send you off to have the compassion beaten out of you. He trained you himself so he could claim that he did a better job. He told you that I knew nothing so I’d be safe if anyone ever found out about you. Do you understand that? Do you know enough now?”
He felt like he understood nothing.
She squeezed his hands fiercely. “He told you to use people so you’d protect your heart, Hunter.” Her voice broke again. “Because love always carries the risk of loss.”
Hunter squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Kate.
“He was never disappointed in you, Hunter. Never.”
“You don’t know that.”
She sighed and touched his cheek. He didn’t want to accept her comfort—but he so did.
“Remember those files I gave you?”
His eyes opened. “Yes.”
“Your dad set those aside before he left. He said to give them to you if he didn’t make it back.” She frowned. “But then he took you with him, and then the car crash—”
“Why didn’t you give them to me before now?” he demanded.
“Because I didn’t want you in danger!” She paused to compose herself. “And you were just so furious, and you wouldn’t talk to me—you went so far as to change how you looked—”
“Because I hated looking like him! I hated the reminder every time I looked in the mirror! I hated knowing I’d failed him—”
“You didn’t fail him, Hunter. You never failed him.” Her eyes were shining with fresh tears. “You wouldn’t talk to me. I didn’t know what you’d do if I gave you those files. But then the fires happened, and the news released information about the pentagrams—I realized you were in the thick of it, firing blind. I realized I’d been wrong to keep the information from you.”
Hunter rubbed his hands across his face. “It didn’t help. I don’t know what it all means. Did he expect me to kill all those kids on his behalf? Did he expect me to kill the Merricks if he failed?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Is that what you think? That he wanted you to kill them?”
“I’m a Fifth!” he cried. “That’s what we’re supposed to do!”
“That’s not what your father was doing, Hunter. He knew how to run a mission his way. He didn’t always report the truth.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her eyes were fierce, level with his. “When he got the report that he was assigned to kill those boys, he wasn’t heading down here for that.”
“What was he doing then?”
“He was coming here to help them.”
Everyone else was picking through a bucket of KFC, but Hunter didn’t feel like eating. His mom had offered him the choice of going home versus staying here. And while things between him and her didn’t feel quite so strained, the thought of facing his grandfather was too much just now.
Yet he didn’t want to sit at the table with a bunch of people with mixed feelings about him, either.
But Michael had asked for trust, and Hunter owed him this much.
He still couldn’t believe Kate was dead. He kept feeling that he should send her a text about his dad, just to let her know.
“You all right?” Nick was staring at him across the table.
“Yeah.” He wasn’t, but what else was he going to say? They knew everything, from the drive into the mountains, to Silver preventing the gun from firing, to Kate’s death.
Well, not everything.
Becca came around the table and put her arms around his neck from behind. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
